


Detours You Didn’t Mean to Take

by laterose, scherpzinning



Series: Road Trip Season 7 [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 16:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15272043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laterose/pseuds/laterose, https://archiveofourown.org/users/scherpzinning/pseuds/scherpzinning
Summary: Without the Castle of Lions, the trip back to Earth becomes a kind of space road trip. And, as everyone knows, no one ever knows what can go down during a road trip.





	Detours You Didn’t Mean to Take

On a ranked list of ‘worst road trips Lance has ever been on’, this one wouldn’t even make the top five. Sure, the Castle of Lions was gone and who knows how long it would take them to get back to Earth, but hey- at least he isn’t squeezed into the middle of the back seat between Marco and Luis. Not that Kaltenecker was any better of a copilot, but Lance did have to admit that the endless expanse of space was prettier than the endless expanse of central Ohio. 

On the comms, everyone was quiet. Time was weird in space,  doubly so after a battle as big as the one they had just won, but if Lance thought of having left the Castle of Lions in the morning, then it would have easily been late afternoon already. After hours of flying with nothing to listen or talk to but his own thoughts, Lance was almost unbearingly fidgety. 

“Hey, guys?”

“Yes, Lance?” Lance had never Allura sound so  _ tired _ , which was saying a lot because, honestly, Allura sounded some kind of tired more often than not. 

“Are we going to stop for the night? Because I know the lions can technically fly on autopilot, but I would really rather prefer to sleep on a surface that isn’t moving. Motion sickness, or whatever.” 

“I second not getting motion sickness,” Hunk chimed in. 

“We’re supposed to be meeting Matt at the agreed location tomorrow, so we do have some time to stop and rest.” Lance silently thanked the stars for Pidge. 

Even so, there was a moment of silence before Allura answered. “Alright,” she said. “We’ll stop on the next suitable planet and get a few hours of rest. Thank you for suggesting it, Lance.” 

Lance: 1, everyone else: 0.  
  


The next suitable planet turned out to not be a planet at all, but a moon off of some planet. Lance didn’t think that the moon had an atmosphere or whatever, but he was sure the lions had something to do with it . He was too tired to care enough to try and figure out what kind of influence that was.

They arranged the lions in a kind of loose circle, and everyone even dutifully laughed when Lance made a joke about circling the wagons. It was the thought that counted, sometimes. Someone suggested sleeping around a fire, but after they all looked out at the empty, rocky horizon they agreed to just sleep in their lions. Even so, Coran did his best and even got a tiny,  _ tiny _ fire going. 

Dinner was a quiet affair. They had all separated into quasi-cliques- Lance, Pidge, and Hunk, Keith, his mom, and not-dead-Shiro, and then Allura, Romelle, and Coran- and although they all sat in a circle around the small half-hearted fire eating some kind of space rations they had packed, no one talked. The events of the past however-many hours was like a blanket that covered them all and weighed heavy on their shoulders.

One by one, everyone began to get up and headed back into their lions. Soon enough, there were only three of them left- Keith, his intimidating Galra mom, and Lance.  Keith and his mom, sitting across from Lance, had their heads bowed together and were talking in low voices. For a moment Lance thought about maybe going over, introducing himself, getting in good with the scary Galra woman. But then Keith pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed wearily, and Lance decided to give the pair some time alone. So he stood and, with an awkward smile when Keith and his mom looked over at him, walked up the ramp into Red’s open mouth. 

**

Lance had tried to sleep. He’d gone through his nighttime routine-washed his face,  changed into his pajamas, the whole shebang. But then as soon as he put his head on his pillow and closed his eyes, all he could see was the explosion of the Castle, of the unnatural brightness of the quintessence field, the way alternating waves of hot adrenaline and icy panic had crashed over his mind. 

Ripping off his eye mask and throwing it at the opposite wall with a frustrated sigh, Lance sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The clock in the tiny cabin told him that he had been trying to get to sleep for over an hour, and he scowled at it. As if that could change anything.

Grumbling obscenities to himself, Lance grabbed his jacket and pulled it on over his pajamas. Back on Earth- at  _ home _ \- it had always calmed him down to see the stars. He’d go out to the backyard or to the beach or, at the garrison, the roof, and simply lay splayed out while he stared up at the sky, mentally tracing the constellations he knew. 

Four steps out of Red, Lance stopped.   
  


Keith was still where he was when Lance left him. His knees were pulled up to his chest, and he was resting his chin on top of them as he looked into the now-dead pit where someone’s attempt at a fire had been. He didn't look up at Lance, almost as if he was so lost in his own thoughts he couldn’t even hear Lance. 

Lance was walking towards Keith before he had consciously decided what to do. 

It took Keith up until Lance was just a few feet away to notice him, and when he looked up at Lance his eyes were bloodshot, and the bags underneath were as dark as his Marmora suit. Honestly, he looked kind of awful. 

“Hey, man,” Lance said, his throat suddenly dry. As awful as Keith looked, the memories of the past time as pilots together flashed brightly in Lance’s mind. “You mind if I, uh, sit with you?” 

For a split, anxiety-filled second, Keith just stared up at Lance. Then he shrugged a shoulder, patting the empty space next to him while looking back into the fire. 

Lance sat, then crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back. None of the constellations were the same as the ones on Earth, but even just the simple act of looking up at them worked to calm Lance down. He even started to make up constellations, trying to remember the Greek mythology he had learned as a kid.  
  


“He’s really proud of you, you know.” 

Lance startled, looking over at Keith with wide eyes. Keith had turned his head, resting his cheek on his knees as he looked over at Lance with a look that Lance couldn’t  _ quite _ figure out. Lance opened his mouth to reply, but Keith kept talking instead. 

“Shiro, I mean. He’s really proud that you were able to get through to him that one time. So, uh,” Keith looked away, picking his head up off his knees and looking back into the empty fire pit. “I guess what I’m saying is don’t beat yourself up about not knowing. He’s still really proud.” 

Something swelled in Lance’s chest, and he pushed himself up off the ground so that he was sitting in a position that mirrored Keith’s. He wanted to let himself soak in the fact that _Shiro_ was _proud of him_ , but something weighed at this thoughts. He bit his lip before answering.  

“I didn’t- I couldn’t figure out that anything was wrong, though.” Lance spoke softly, not trusting himself to talk any louder without crying like he had earlier. “I saw him and I couldn’t figure out that-” 

“Hey.” 

Lance startled again when Keith reached out and gently put his hand on Lance’s shoulder. Keith had straightened, and was looking at Lance with such an intensity that if the two of them had been standing, Lance would’ve taken a step back. As it was, Lance felt his breath catch in his throat. 

“Lance, you got farther than any of us did,” Keith said, looking at Lance like he was trying to burn a brand onto his soul. “He couldn’t even get through to  _ me _ until I was in the middle of getting my ass kicked by that clone.” 

Keith’s eyes left Lance’s for a moment, and he laughed dryly. Something in Lance’s stomach twisted, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to reach out and tuck that stray piece of Keith’s hair behind his ear, and to try to reassure Keith like Keith was trying to do to him right then. Keith’s shoulders always seemed to be bent under the weight of one expectation or another, and rivalry or not Lance always wished he could help in some way.

“What I’m saying,” Keith said, breaking Lance out of that weirdly intimate thought process, “is that Shiro trusted  _ you _ the most to try and get through to you, and you were...strong enough, I guess, to allow him to get through.” 

In the odd lighting of the barren moon they had landed on, Keith’s eyes looked impossibly purple, and his hair shone so black it looked almost blue. Lance swallowed dryly, and forced himself to smile. 

“Thanks, Keith,” he said. 

Those seemed to be the magic words, because Keith, his lips quirking up into a small smile, squeezed briefly before he let go of Lance’s shoulder and began to curl in on himself again. Even though some part of Lance’s brain was setting off warning bells and demanding to know why he was essentially gazing at Keith like some lovelorn Austen protagonist, Lance couldn’t look away. 

Lance was sure something had happened while Keith was gone with the Blade, apart from the whole ‘meeting his alien mother who had left him when he was a baby’ thing. His hair was longer, curling and brushing over the tops of his shoulders, his shoulders seemed broader, and, as crazy as it might sound if Lance tried to explain it out loud, he seemed a lot more  _ weary _ . Something about the way he looked at the world, the way he considered anyone and everything before he spoke.  
  


If Lance thought Keith was attractive _before_ Keith had left for the blade, then Lance might _really_ have a problem on his hands now.  

That was a thought for another night, though. Not tonight, when everyone was tired and injured and it seemed like Keith simply wanted to have an intimate soul-bearing conversation. 

“Hey, Keith?” 

Keith looked over at Lance. 

“I think- I know Red would totally be okay if you came and hung out with- in?- her again,” Lance said, for once letting his mouth run faster than his brain could keep up with. Just in case he lost his nerve. “If it ever gets too crowded in Black, with Shiro and your mom and everyone, you’re always welcome to come hang out with me and Kaltenecker. There are two bunks, too, in case you ever need to...catch some Zs, or whatever.”

For a moment, Keith simply stared at Lance. Lance forced himself to sit still and ignore how his stomach was doing fucking olympic level gymnastics, allowing Keith time to process. Then, Keith smiled a smile so small and soft that Lance’s stomach did that weird flippy thing again, this time aiming for whatever level was above the olympics.

“Thanks, Lance,” Keith said. Then he leaned over, putting his hand in between the two of them. And, ever so gently, he kissed Lance’s cheek. It was barely even a kiss, just a soft pressure and a breeze against Lance’s cheek, but a kiss it was. 

Keith stood and, with one last smile, turned and walked back to the Black Lion. 

Lance was left alone in the starry, barren night. But he couldn’t help but smile, and brush the tips of his fingers against his cheek. Then he, too, got up and went back to his lion. 

This time, when Lance closed his eyes, he saw impossibly purple eyes and impossibly soft, small smiles, and he slept better than he had in months. 

**Author's Note:**

> omg thank you for reading!! this was inspired by a conversation with my lovely friend and amazing beta reader Maddy laterose, in which I essentially decided to write my own fun and no-stress season seven road trip before season seven actually came out and made all of us emotional. 
> 
> Super super thanks to Maddy for:  
> a) encouraging me to write and post this  
> b) helping me craft the perfect playlist  
> c) beta-ing this


End file.
